Known for her romanticising of American life in her aesthetic and lyrics, now Del Rey has told Pitchfork that she does not feel comfortable doing so while the new President is in power.

“I definitely changed my visuals on my tour videos,” she said. “I’m not going to have the American flag waving while I’m singing ‘Born to Die.’ It’s not going to happen. I’d rather have static. It’s a transitional period, and I’m super aware of that. I think it would be inappropriate to be in France with an American flag.

“It would feel weird to me now – it didn’t feel weird in 2013.

Lana Del Rey live

Speaking of the mood while making ‘Lust For Life’ during the US election, she said: “All the guys in the studio, we didn’t know we were going to start walking in every day and talking about what was going on. We hadn’t ever done that before, but everyday during the election, you’d wake up and some new horrible thing was happening. Korea, with missiles suddenly being pointed at the western coast.

“With ‘When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing,’ I was posing a real question to myself: Could this be the end of an era? The fall of Rome?”

Del Rey also revealed that the new album has much more of a focus on women’s rights than her previous work.

“It’s more appropriate now than under the Obama administration, where at least everyone I knew felt safe,” she said. “It was a good time. We were on the up-and-up. Women started to feel less safe under this administration instantly. What if they take away Planned Parenthood? What if we can’t get birth control?

“Now, when people ask me those questions, I feel a little differently…. When you have a leader at the top of the pyramid who is casually being loud and funny about things like that, it’s brought up character defects in people who already have the propensity to be violent towards women.”

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